I know that birthdays are supposed to be joyful occasions. An opportunity to experience how many people love you and care that you're around. A time to celebrate the fact that you've passed another milestone in your life and look forward to the next year and the ones after.
Unfortunately, like most things in my life, I mostly only intellectually understand why people enjoy birthdays. Mine...well, from since I was in middle school they've been a day I rather dread. In high school, I was a misfit, one where I knew better then to expect more than a few good friends to care and make an effort to recognize the day. In college, it always fell between the end of finals and when people came back to town for graduation, so I was usually alone as people cleared out for the time and was left celebrating as a package deal with another friend whose birthday was a few days later after everyone had returned. Living as an afterthought.
Grad school, mostly the same. After graduation I was moving around and struggling to move up in the adult job world. My first birthday post-graduation was spent at the commencement ceremony of the university I'd worked at for the past 9 months, having given my two weeks notice and starting my new job in NYC in three days. Ever since then, it's been an issue of friends.
NYC can be a very isolating place and the core group that I initially met turned out to be much older and drifted apart about two years after I met them. Since then, I was lucky and had a good friend move to the city, only to have to move back home after losing her job in the recession. Of course, that was back in 2010.
I want to have a normal birthday, a normal life, where I feel appreciated and hopeful about the past and next years. I can't remember what that's like at least when it comes to birthdays. I have good days and weeks where I believe it's true, more when I'm just trying to convince myself over the ennui, but this birthday disappointed hardcore on both the family and friend fronts. I'm trying to be positive and make the best of the situation but damn it's hard.
I want to be happy. I'd settle for just not feeling like I don't have anything to look forward to in terms of how my emotional life is going. I'm just finding it particularly hard at the moment considering that another milestone has passed and I'm more disappointed than ever in life and relations.
Unfortunately, like most things in my life, I mostly only intellectually understand why people enjoy birthdays. Mine...well, from since I was in middle school they've been a day I rather dread. In high school, I was a misfit, one where I knew better then to expect more than a few good friends to care and make an effort to recognize the day. In college, it always fell between the end of finals and when people came back to town for graduation, so I was usually alone as people cleared out for the time and was left celebrating as a package deal with another friend whose birthday was a few days later after everyone had returned. Living as an afterthought.
Grad school, mostly the same. After graduation I was moving around and struggling to move up in the adult job world. My first birthday post-graduation was spent at the commencement ceremony of the university I'd worked at for the past 9 months, having given my two weeks notice and starting my new job in NYC in three days. Ever since then, it's been an issue of friends.
NYC can be a very isolating place and the core group that I initially met turned out to be much older and drifted apart about two years after I met them. Since then, I was lucky and had a good friend move to the city, only to have to move back home after losing her job in the recession. Of course, that was back in 2010.
I want to have a normal birthday, a normal life, where I feel appreciated and hopeful about the past and next years. I can't remember what that's like at least when it comes to birthdays. I have good days and weeks where I believe it's true, more when I'm just trying to convince myself over the ennui, but this birthday disappointed hardcore on both the family and friend fronts. I'm trying to be positive and make the best of the situation but damn it's hard.
I want to be happy. I'd settle for just not feeling like I don't have anything to look forward to in terms of how my emotional life is going. I'm just finding it particularly hard at the moment considering that another milestone has passed and I'm more disappointed than ever in life and relations.
posted by AnonymousX at 9:37 PM
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